The Ancestor's Tale - A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life

A fully updated edition of one of the most original accounts of evolution ever written.

The Ancestor's Tale is a dazzling, four-billion-year pilgrimage to the origins of us all. Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong take us on an exhilarating reverse journey through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life. It is a journey happily interrupted by meetings of fellow modern animals (as well as plants, fungi and bacteria) similarly tracing their evolutionary path back through history. As each evolutionary pilgrim tells their tale, Dawkins and Wong shed light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection and extinction.

Written with unparalleled wit, clarity and intelligence, taking in new scientific discoveries of the past decade and including new 'tales', illustrations and fractal diagrams, The Ancestor's Tale shows us just how remarkable we are.

'A new chronicle of life, wonderfully illustrated, from this great evolutionist' Economist

'The result is not just a wealth of ideas about how living things evolved, but a strong sense of the urgency and absorption with which science is done' Independent

'The Ancestor's Tale achieves the almost impossible: it makes biology . . . interesting again' Lancet

'This is epic stuff indeed and Mr Dawkins carries it off with triumphant skill, never sacrificing the complexity of his argument to the voracious god of dumbing down' Wall Street Journal

See what readers are saying:

'[An] eminently readable book, fizzing with evidence, anecdote, theories and speculation' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'These essays are marvels of wit and models of scientific integrity' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'If this is the only pilgrimage you undertake during your lifetime, I'm sure you will find it a most rewarding one' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐